Bentonville has put together some pretty gaudy streaks of late in the 7A/6AWest Conference

Now the Tigers are also knocking on the door for more in the state’s largest classification.

Bentonville will make its fourth straight appearance in the championship game, a streak outdone only once in the state’s largest classification nearly a quarter of a century ago when Fort Smith Northside appeared in five straight from 1985 through 1989. Pine Bluff also appeared in four straight championship games from 1992 through 1995.

The Tigers had their consecutive regular-season winning streak of 36 straight snapped by Broken Arrow, Okla., in a 24-17 loss in week two this season as well as their 22-game home winning streak.

Bentonville rebounded, however, to win their seventh straight conference championship, which is a 7A/6A West record. The Tigers also assured themselves of being ranked in the Associated Press Top 10 poll for the 84th straight poll when the final poll is released in two weeks, which is a state record.

WEST VERSUS CENTRAL

Bentonville will play Cabot on Friday for the Class 7A state championship.

Cabot is the first team from the 7A-Central to earn a spot in the state championship game since West Memphis was manhandled, 54-20, by Springdale in 2005. Cabot is also trying to break the eight-year streak of championships held by the West. Little Rock Central in 2004 was the last team not from the West to win the title.

The game essentially pits undefeated teams against each other. Cabot is 12-0 while Bentonville is 10-2, but undefeated against Arkansas competition. The Tiger’s losses are to Broken Arrow, Okla., and Euless (Texas) Trinity in September. Broken Arrow finished 10-3 after losing Friday in Oklahoma’s Class 6A semifinals, 30-18, to Tulsa Union. Euless Trinity is 11-2 after beating Southlake (Texas) Carroll, 42-38, on Friday to advance to the Class 5A Division 1 quarterfinals.

507 WINS

Friday’s championship game will feature a pair of coaches that have reached legendary status.

Cabot coach Mike Malham Jr., and Bentonville coach Barry Lunney have combined to win 507 games in their head coaching careers.

Malham is 269-114-4 in 33 seasons at Cabot. Lunney is 238-85-1 in 27 seasons as a head coach, including two at Beebe, 16 at Fort Smith Southside and the last nine at Bentonville. Malham is second among active head coaches behind only Tom Tice of Huntsville and is fifth all-time. Lunney is fourth among active head coaches and 10th all-time.

Malham graduated from Little Rock McClellan in 1971 and played in the Arkansas High School Coaches Association All-Star game.

Lunney graduated from Fort Smith Northside in 1970 and also played in the All-Star game.

Both of their dads also were head coaches; Mike Malham, Sr., at McClellan and John Lunney at Fort Smith Saint Annes.

TIGERS VERSUS PANTHERS

Friday will be just the third meeting between Cabot and Bentonville.

The Tigers beat Cabot, 21-7, in the second round of the playoffs on the way to the state title in 2001.

Cabot downed Bentonville, 28-18, in the second round of the Class 3A playoffs in 1984 several years before the two schools were elevated to the state’s largest classification.

This is the sixth meeting between Lunney and Malham, however. The previous five games were while Lunney was at Southside, and he holds a 3-2 advantage against Malham.

DEAD-T

Cabot and Malham are famous for their rushing attack out of the Dead-T formation.

The Dead-T is a variation of the T formation, which is considered the oldest offensive formation in football. In the Dead-T, three running backs are lined up horizontally to the line of scrimmage behind the quarterback.

Cabot fullback Zach Launius leads the Panthers with 1,816 yards and 30 touchdowns. In Friday’s 43-42 double-overtime win against North Little Rock, Launius had 46 carries for 242 yards and five touchdowns as well as the game-winning two-point conversion in the second overtime.

Maybe more telling of Launius’ performance on Friday night was that 19 of his carries accounted for either a touchdown or a first down. Launius ran 19 times on first down for 112 yards, 16 times for 92 yards on second down and 11 times for 38 yards on third down, according to stats provided by Mickey Doyle.

Cabot rushed 70 times for 325 yards in the game and controlled 31:35 of the clock.

SCOUTING CHANGES

How teams scout opponents has changed recently on all levels but especially for high school football teams.

Even cheating has changed.

Spying on practices and cutting touchdown plays out of exchanged film were common ways teams tried to get an advantage, but recently cheating has reached the technology age.

A website called HUDL is now a common means of how teams exchange game videotape with each other for scouting purposes.

Coaches also use the website to post practice schedules, practice videotape and messages to players, all password protected of course, supposedly.

Coaches for Destrehan High School in Louisiana were recently charged with offenses against intellectual property for illegally accessing practice footage and playbooks of their next opponent, South Lafourche, which Destrehan defeated, 49-24.

The Louisiana High School Athletic Association suspended four coaches for the rest of the regular season and another coach for the rest of the year. It was determined that the coaches accessed South Lafourche’s information on the website for 8 to 12 hours. After watching the game tape, South Lafourche realized Destrehan knew the game plan, what plays were going to be run, and even the cadence.

The case also emphasizes how much scouting opponents how changed through the years.

As a high school play at Northside in the late 1960s, Lunney watched very little film. He was given a mimeographed scouting report with diagrams of opponent’s plays, formations, starting lineups, jersey number and sizes that was put together after coaches had scouted the opponent the week before at their game.

“There were a lot of sheets with lots and lots of diagrams,” Lunney said. “Filming was such a hard thing back there, I don’t remember watching much film at all. It would break, and we’d have to stop the projector and tape it together.”

When Lunney took his first assistant’s job at Vian, Okla., in 1974, he was part of a small coaching staff that took turns doing the advanced scouting, but again very little actual footage of an opponent was available.

“We only had four coaches and we coached everything,” Lunney said. “We didn’t have any junior high coaches so we took turns, one of us would go watch the team that we play the next week.”

By the early 1980s, teams started filming their games with VHS tapes and it became much easier to exchange film. Teams still made out the scouting reports on copy machines, which replaced the old blue mimeographed copies.

“The VHS tapes were liked we’d died and gone to heaven for the coaching profession,” Lunney said. “We didn’t have to worry about all that splicing with tape and film. Even in the early 1980s, we’d leave that 16mm film in canisters and someone from Little Rock would come pick it up and have it processed and have it back at the fieldhouse on Saturday morning. With the VHS, we had it automatically and we’d trade tapes.”

Teams would send the two previous games on tape with the advance scouts to exchange before with the coaches of the next opponent. The advance scouts, usually two or three junior high coaches, would travel to the next opponent’s game and write down starting lineups, formations, plays, and any other useful information.

“We’d scout live with our junior staff and they would bring back tapes from the two previous games,” Lunney said. “We’d have tapes from two games and the live scouting report from that game that our junior high coaches brought back.”

By 2000, DVDs became the accepted format. The new ease of making DVDs allowed instant access to game footage. Teams still did advance scouting, but teams started exchanging game footage on Saturday mornings at neutral sites of the game from the night before as well as two previous games.

Even as recent as five years ago, paper scouting reports were still given to players with starting lineups, sizes, formations, plays, and tendencies.

That became to change in just the past few years with websites like HUDL where teams could digitally put game footage, practice footage, practice schedules and scouting reports for players.

“The scouting report is now basically on that for the kids to access,” Lunney said. “They can go on there and start watching game tape. We can tell when they’ve logged in and how long they’ve watched, now they may have their sister watching. Everything is Internet-based. We were one of the first to do it. Everybody in our league was on it within a year or so.”

Teams must post the two previous games by Tuesday of the week before the game and then must post the most recent game by Saturday by noon from the night before.

That also ended the need for junior high coaches to actually scout teams live. All of the information they had been putting together for the almost 50 years was replaced by computers.

“It seemed like overnight all of this stuff came about,” Lunney said. “The colleges started doing it first and then those tech guys got involved. It’s pretty slick.”

College coaches can also watch recruit’s games on the website by calling a high school coach and getting a password to access games. Players can also put together highlight footage for coaches to watch.

In Lunney’s 45 years as a player and a coach, scouting has advanced to this from grainy, almost unwatchable film that went flop, flop, flop when it broke.

“In a room like an old movie theater,” Lunney said. “It’s gone a long, long way.”

However, replacing coaches with three sets of eyes that sat and wrote down opponent’s players, formation and plays can’t completely be replaced.

“That’s interesting because just the other day I was talking to my guys about, and there are some things that you just can’t feel,” Lunney said.

Lunney played for Bill Stancil at Northside, who was a legendary coach ahead of his time in many things.

“Coach Stancil had a big book that the coaches would pick up on Friday night before they left that they had to pick up,” Lunney said. “They were required to be at the game an hour before the game and get as close to the 50 as possible. He wanted them to write notes about the teams, were they as big as what it said on the roster, whatever. One thing that was required was to listen to their snap count, was it down, set, hut, or was it down, set, hut, go. You came back with every bit of information you could. Did a player leave the game early with an injury? Was he really hurt or was he just sitting over there on the sideline. Was he limping after the game? You had to take 20 pencils and make sure they were sharpened. It was like writing an intelligence report for national security.”